TAX LAW
We advise business owners and families on the tax consequences of what they are already doing: forming and restructuring entities, selling a business, moving assets into trust, and responding when a taxing authority disagrees.
What This Work Actually Involves
Where Tax Questions Actually Arise
Tax questions rarely arrive labelled as tax questions. They arrive inside a sale, a reorganization, a partnership breakup or an estate plan, and they usually determine whether the deal is worth doing on the terms proposed. We handle tax work alongside the transaction or the plan it belongs to, not as a separate exercise afterward.
Our clients are closely held businesses and their owners, families holding operating assets, and individuals whose affairs cross state lines. Where a matter calls for a specialist accountant, a valuation professional or counsel admitted elsewhere, we bring them in and coordinate the work.
Entity selection and structuring
Choosing and building the structure that carries the least tax friction for how the business actually operates, including multi-state and Delaware structures.
Transaction tax structuring
The allocation, timing and characterization questions that determine what a seller keeps, resolved before terms are fixed rather than after.
Estate and gift tax planning
Reducing exposure lawfully through the timing and structure of transfers, coordinated with the estate plan and any operating business interests.
Audits and examinations
Representation before the Internal Revenue Service and the Michigan Department of Treasury, from the first information request through resolution.
Assessments and appeals
Contesting assessments and penalties, negotiating resolution, and litigating where the position is worth defending.
Operating tax questions
The recurring questions of running a company: worker classification, distributions, basis, and the treatment of owner compensation.
Representative Experience
Matters We Have Handled
Sale of a professional services firm
Represented the seller of a professional services firm in a sale that turned on significant tax structuring questions, which had to be resolved before terms could be fixed. The sale closed.
Reese Serra and Matt Wozniak · 2025
Estate plan for an owner with substantial operating interests
Designed and implemented an estate plan for a retired business owner holding substantial operating business interests and facing material estate tax exposure. The plan was prepared and executed during the client's lifetime.
Matt Wozniak · 2025
Tax-efficient structure for a family office
Formed new business entities for a family office expanding an established group of companies, building the structure across Michigan and Delaware to be scalable and tax-efficient as the group grows.
Reese Serra · 2026
The matters described above are examples of work performed by The Private Firm. Client identities and identifying details have been omitted or generalized. Every matter turns on its own facts and its own law. Prior results do not guarantee, predict or imply a similar outcome in any future matter. Nothing on this page constitutes legal advice or creates an attorney-client relationship.
Who Handles This Work
Tax Counsel at The Private Firm
Tax work at the firm is handled alongside the transaction or estate plan it arises in, which is why these matters pair the attorney running the deal with the attorney who built the plan.